The university had been criticised in the wake of the rejection of a state school pupil, Laura Spence, who subsequently was offered a scholarship for Harvard University in the United States.

BBC: Oxford reaches out to state schools

That notion was a key factor in the Laura Spence affair, he said - when Oxford was accused by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, of being elitist after Laura, a comprehensive school pupil, failed to get a place to study medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford.

BBC: Private schools 'engines of change'